DailyDirt: Safe Drinking Water

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The world is covered in water, but not all of it is actually safe to drink. Usually, the problem is that it's too energy intensive (and thereby costly) to purify it. It's a long-standing problem, but there's been some progress. Here are just few quick links on potable water supplies.

Re:

"The film takes place in a dystopian 2033, after a comet has hit the Earth, altering the climate and turning it into a wasteland. There has been no rain for over 11 years. Water is extremely scarce, and what little is available is controlled by the Water & Power (W&P), led by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell). Water & Power are opposed by the almost mythical "Rippers," a mysterious group that no one can find. Tank Girl, a.k.a. Rebecca (Lori Petty), is a member of a small outlaw group that has set up their own water well in the basement of a house. Learning of the well, W&P attacks, killing most in the house and taking Rebecca and a young girl named Sam. Imprisoned, Rebecca is repeatedly brutalized by Kesslee, who wants to break her spirit. Between intellectual jousts with Kesslee, Rebecca befriends her neighbor cellmate, a mechanic who works on W&P's vehicles...."

Ridiculous isn't it?

There is nothing but energy out there for us to use. Solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal... there is a massive swath of technologies we know how to build, and all that would take is materials and laborers (mechanical mostly, human somewhat). The entire notion of "conserving water" is nonsensical too - when water is used for some purpose, it doesn't just vanish later, it remains in the planetary ecosystem. Every drop of water you use in the shower goes right back out into the world and eventually lands right back in the oceans where it started.

The entire population of the planet, with a few exeptions, is so incredibly hung up on the money system that people don't even question it anymore - this in spite of the absolutely staggering waste of other resources it causes and the vast social problems we have because of it. It's quite a trick - keep people arguing about irrelevant garbage and they won't drill down until they find the one common denominator when it comes to what is killing us all - money, trade and the profit motive, the root cause of virtually all suffering and difficulties we have today.

Safe water should be one of many first priorities

I'm not saying that foundations supporting HIV research and other disease control problems are intentionally being hypocritical, but if your goal is to saves lives, infrastructure and clean water are BY FAR more important than a vaccine or cure that most of the people you are trying to save can't afford anyway. The people who benefit most from such advances are, you guessed it, wealthy denizens of developed countries- and the drug companies doing the research.

Water, Water Everywhere

People tend to forget that in some regions, there is more than enough water to drink, wash cars, water lawns, and even fill squirt guns. If the fresh water is not used, it runs into the ocean where it would require desalinization for drinking.

Clean freshwater is a huge problem in some areas, but certainly not across the globe. It is a regional problem.

Water, Water Everywhere

People tend to forget that in some regions, there is more than enough water to drink, wash cars, water lawns, and even fill squirt guns. If the fresh water is not used, it runs into the ocean where it would require desalinization for drinking.

Clean freshwater is a huge problem in some areas, but certainly not across the globe. It is a regional problem.

“Abundant brackish groundwater is available, and technology exists to make that water drinkable.” But desalinating enough brackish groundwater to supply entire communities requires tremendous amounts of electricity, Baldwin said. “That’s too expensive for most small towns,” Baldwin said. “But if you have good wind resources like Colorado City does, then you may be able to make desalination affordable by using wind power.”

Re: Ridiculous isn't it?

I have friends who will pay you $10 million if you promise never to speak or write of those dangerous insights again!

No? All right then, how about $50 million? Isn't that just a little bit tempting? Think how effectively you could use that money to promote some of your OTHER causes.

Money is like a drug. Humans want pleasant lives NOW, while they still have a chance to enjoy them. People can be altruistic toward family, friends, and even the occasional stranger, but I'm not sure individuals of our species will ever become altruistic toward the world.

This human failing only matters now that we have a global technological culture. Until very recently, when resources became scarce, our kind would just move on, and keep moving until we found the stuff we needed.

Now that we are so numerous, I don't see how we can fail to use up everything. We just don't have instincts for preserving the whole world. Such an instinct would never have made sense in the past. The only way we might acquire such an instinct would be to have many or most of us die out, leaving behind the ones who cared about the world. But the ones left alive would probably not be the ones who cared about the world -- just the fighters, as usual.

The only way we might be able to stave off the stripping bare of the planet would be to modify our own brains to make us less selfish. When you think of the kind of conflicts such a policy would generate, it's chilling. And obviously, the selfish people would never submit.

No, I think we are going down. After the catastrophes have drastically reduced the population, maybe a new way for humans to cooperate will emerge.